Writing this Update has been a very intense process for me because of the transformation I am going through in my personal recovery process.  Thus the Newsletter page that I am adding to this Update is one in which I share what is happening in my recovery from a level of intimacy that I usually reserve for my personal journal in the Joy2MeU Journal.  A piece of writing entitled Communication (which I had intended to be the first section of that Newsletter page) is an explanation of something I mentioned above - " On my personal path, some of those wounds are ancient and involve lifetimes of searing pain." -  in regard to the fact that my process takes me to depths that most people never have to go to, and into issues that most people do not need to look at. 

I am including this here, because if you are fairly new to the process or find some of my references beyond your understanding at this time, please do not let it bother you.  Take what resonates with you from my writing and leave the rest to come back to at some later time - if you are moved to do that.  You do not have to feel obligated to read past this top section, because the way things turned out, the short piece I planned on writing about emotional passion (in relationship to my perspective of Mel Gibson's movie that I am going to share next) turned very metaphysical on me.  So it may be confusing in a different way than the emotional intimacy I share in the additional Newsletter page.  (At the last moment, I decided to move the piece about emotional passion to the end of the Newsletter page and the Communication section to this page.)

The bottom line, is that I wanted to share here a quote from that Newsletter page about courage for those of you who don't make it that far in reading this Update.  I think it would be valuable to add this perspective of courage to your recovery to help you in your process of learning to stop judging and shaming yourself so much.  So I will include that excerpt and then jump right into the movie review.

"Most people have a misunderstanding about courage.  They think that courage is something that feels strong and powerful and confident.  That is not true at all.  Courage is when we are scared to death and we move forward anyway.  A example I have used over the years to help people understand this is:  that a person who charges a machine gun nest and does not feel fear is not courageous - they are insane.

What courage feels like in actual experience is: "Oh crap, I have to do this."  Courage is a soul compulsion.  It is when our soul, our Spirit, is telling us that we need to do something no matter how scared we are - no matter how terrifying it appears to be. 

Courage isn't necessarily about doing something we want to do, it is definitely about doing something we need to do.  We become willing to move through our fear of the unknown because our intuition guides us, our soul compels us, to move forward - to take the plunge." - Newsletter March 2004 Update 

The Passion of Christ is masterful and compelling movie making.  Mel Gibson knows how to make a movie.  It is also relentlessly, brutally violent.  I am a former actor.  I love well made movies and great acting performances.  Violence in movies does not bother me.  The brutality in this movie was so relentless and intense that it caused me to flinch several times.  It brought to mind the type of Christian fanatics that wore hair shirts and flagellated themselves in self torture for their shameful humanness - to try to emulate what they thought was the suffering of Jesus. 

What bothered me more than the violence and brutality though, is that I was never emotionally involved in the movie.  The movie - to me - did not have heart.  The actor who portrayed Jesus had no passion.  He stoically endured his torture - occasionally reacting out of his "weak" humanity, occasionally proclaiming higher Truth in a stern manner.  The word that came to mind for me to describe this version of Jesus, was Calvinistic.  Dour and austere are adjectives that come to mind.  I just looked up Calvinistic in the dictionary - and it is an accurate term for what I felt about the portrayal. 

". . . emphasizing the depravity and helplessness of man . . . "

In flashback scenes the actor had a "holy" benevolent loving look down perfectly.  He gazed with benevolent love as he pronounced his Truths and taught his disciples.  But he didn't have any passion - no emotional intensity.

Jesus as I know Jesus was a robust, passionate man.  A man who would laugh from his belly, and shed tears of sorrow.  A man who would become enraged at blasphemy - and fling over the moneychangers tables in the temple. 

And Jesus as I understand Jesus, was a mystical messenger successfully completing a Karmic mission.  To my mind, there should have been - as he was hanging on the cross dying - a moment of triumph.  A moment where we could see the Joy he was feeling at accomplishing his mission.  For a True believer to die a martyrs death is triumph. 

Even if he was "the only begotten son of God" - which is to me a ridiculous compromise worked out by a committee in the politically motivated and emotionally charged atmosphere of the Council of Nicea - he would have known that death is an illusion.  He would have known he was doing something that was changing the course of history.  There would have at least been some satisfaction in accomplishing his mission. 

How could this man, whose life and death has so impacted the course of human history, not have been passionate?  That to me, was the fatal flaw in this movie.  There was no heart.  There was no passion in the Christ in Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ. 

Communication is actually a very difficult and challenging task.  In the second article of my Healthy Relationship series, I talk about how communication is the foundation of a healthy romantic relationship - and that is true with any relationship.  Communicating with someone one on one is a much simpler task than communicating with a larger audience - and yet it is extremely difficult one on one for a multitude of reasons. It is challenging just in terms of surface communication before any of the other levels are brought into play.

"For the purpose of this discussion I am going to divide communication into two levels: surface communication having to do with ideas, facts, details, concepts, etc. - and emotional communication.  In reality, of course, all communication contains aspects of both levels - and in relationship, the emotional level is by far the most important and most difficult.

In terms of surface communication, it is very important to establish a common language.  And I am not talking here about one person speaking English and one speaking French.  I am talking about two people who speak the same language linguistically but have different interpretations of various words due to a variety of factors - i.e. raised in different geographic, religious, or cultural environments, different educational or economic levels, different life experiences, etc.  Two people who are on Spiritual paths might speak a slightly different language because one has been involved in Twelve Step Recovery while another has been pursuing a Shamanistic path or Buddhist or whatever." - Healthy Romantic Relationships - part 2, Communication is Key

And I am attempting to communicate on multiple levels.  There are always multiple levels involved in any attempt at communication between people because we are complicated and complex beings.  This is one of the things I point out in the Author's Foreword to my online book in progress. (Which I will get around to finishing one of these days.) 

"The individual human being is a fully contained system involving multiple interrelationships within multiple levels.  This is easy to see, and understand, when looking at the physical level.  The interrelationship of the organs to each other, to the blood, to the skin, to the nervous system, etc. - is a dance of grand, and compelling, complexity.

Just as grand, and compelling, is the complexity of the dance of interrelationship between the mental, emotional, and spiritual components/levels that dynamically interact to form the make up of the individual being - the persona, personality, consciousness, of the self.  The more awareness is acquired about the different levels of the self, and the interrelationships between those levels, the easier it becomes to diagnose the dysfunctional interaction dynamics." - Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Author's Foreword

"Emotions have two vitally important purposes for human beings.  Emotions are a form of communication.  Our feelings are one of the means by which we define ourselves.  The interaction of our intellect and our emotions determines how we relate to ourselves.

Our emotional energy is also the fuel that propels us down the pathways of our life journey.  E-motions are the orchestra that provide the music for our individual dances - that dictate the rhythmic flow and movement of our human dance.  Our feelings help us to define ourselves and then provide the combustible fuel that dictates the speed and direction of our motion - rather we are flowing with it or damming it up within ourselves." - Discernment in relationship to emotional honesty and responsibility ²

"Our emotions are what drive us, what propel us, through life.  Our emotions tell us who we are.  If our relationship with our own emotions is messed up, we cannot see reality clearly. 

If life is a dance, then our emotions provide the music.  Dancing in the dark according to rules that are dysfunctional is not much fun.  Dancing through life believing that we have responsibility for the feelings and behaviors of others, doesn't allow us to relax and enjoy life very much.  Believing that we have to earn love by doing the dance "right,' by being perfect, in order to reach the destination where we will get to live happily-ever-after - sets us up to be unhappy and blame ourselves for being unworthy and unlovable." - Emotional Honesty and Emotional Responsibility Part 2 - codependence recovery

Another reason that my articles have gotten longer, is that I made a choice in the the evolution of my writing for the web not to talk down my audience. In the first year or two I was writing for the web I kind of soft peddled controversial topics in my articles because I didn't want people who were new to recovery - or alternative spiritual perspectives - to reject the information about emotional healing or codependency that could be helpful to them because they still had a black and white perspective in other areas. 

I eventually decided to give my audience the honor of respecting that they could pick the baby out of the bath water - that they would hear what they needed to hear. And if they rejected my work as whole because of a disagreement with something I wrote, then that was something I was powerless over.  The Truth is that I can only try to communicate as clearly as possible and let go of the outcome - I do not have the power to make other people hear me if they aren't ready or don't speak my language. 

And, bottom line, the number 1 reason I write here - my first priority - is because it is what I need to do for my recovery.  If I am able to communicate in a way that helps you, in the process of getting clearer on what is going on inside me - that is a great gift that springs out of the miraculous power of the 12 step recovery process.  In writing this page I am working the twelfth step by sharing with you my 10th and 11th step processing.  I am writing because that is what works for me as a part of the "daily maintenance" of my "spiritual condition."  I am doing it to understand what is going on within me - and to keep my self open to communication from my Self / Spirit / intuition.

In the first Newsletter for my original web site I shared the two key factors in the evolution of my approach to being a teacher - and included the following quote from it on my page Choosing a therapist or counselor with discernment. 

"There were two interrelated things that I had to get clear about when I started working as a therapist:  One is that I am powerless over other people - over the pace of their progress, over whether they hear what I am saying to them, over where their path leads.  I watched a good friend die of Alcoholism (which is in a column in the Alcoholism section) and saw how clearly he helped other alcoholics stay sober because he couldn't - he did more to keep more people sober than many of the sober people I know.  I can't know what someone else's path is - therefore I can't tell them what is right and wrong.  What I can do is help them see themselves clearer (especially as to understanding how their childhood experiences have dictated their lives), see their choices and the possible consequences clearer, and know that we are Spiritual Beings going to boarding school not taking a test we can fail. 

Which brings me to the second thing, which I believe is a Spiritual Truth - I teach best what I need most to learn.  I teach people how to Love themselves because I am trying to learn how to Love myself.  I learned to always listen to what I was saying because, though I have no control whether anyone else hears me, I do have the power to choose to hear myself - and there is always something in what I am saying that applies to me and my process in that moment. . . . .  I am in process just as my clients are - just as we all are.  There is no hierarchy as far as I am concerned - just one wounded person/Magnificent Spiritual Being sharing what has worked for me with another wounded person/Magnificent Spiritual Being. I am doing what I need to do for myself, to heal myself - it doesn't have to do with anyone else - that it helps other people is just a bonus (and an opportunity to settle Karma)." - Joy to You & Me Newsletter I - July 1,1998

The reason that so many people write me to tell me that if feels like I am telling their story, is because they relate to the emotions I share.  When I am sharing my emotional process it doesn't matter how sophisticated the level of recovery is that I am dealing with, how subtle the levels of denial I am peeling away in my process today - it is still possible for someone new to the process to relate to the feelings I share.  Someone on a basic level, new to recovery, can relate to someone who has been at it for many years - because of emotional resonance.

One of the things I try to communicate with people I work with is, that understanding the dynamics of relationship - both internal and external - is more important than surface details.  What I try to do in my work with people individually, and in my writing, is not so much about giving you answers as about helping you understand how to start asking the right questions - help you change your perspective of self and life so that you are focusing on causal dynamics rather than effect / symptoms. 

To paraphrase a parable, what I do is not about giving people a fish to feed them for a day, but rather is about teaching them how to fish so they can feed themselves.  I try to teach people how to see and understand their own inner dynamic from Loving, compassionate perspectives that allow them to become empowered to become positive co-creators of their own lives - to be in recovery healing their wounds and changing their ego programming, by following their own personal Spiritual guidance / intuition. 

As I tell people so often, there is nothing wrong with who we are - it is our relationship with our self and life that got messed up in childhood.  We have the power to change our relationship with self and life.  That is the great news.  The bad news level of that (feels like bad news;-), is that it does require that we feel our feelings.  It is vital to start allowing ourselves to grieve and heal the emotional wounds so that we can get more clearly in touch with, change our relationship with, our own emotions. 

This brings me to the points I wanted to make when I started to write this introductory section.  In the section about courage on the separate Newsletter page, I share about what is going on in my recovery process from a pretty emotional perspective.  This is a level of intimacy that I don't normally share here on Joy2MeU.com.  I usually reserve this type of "in to me see" for my Joy2MeU Journal. 

I am sharing it now because it was the emotional space I was / am experiencing when it came time to write this Update.  I am sharing it as part of my ongoing assignment to be willing to role model that it is okay to be an imperfect, wounded human being in the process of recovery.  I am sharing it because it is important for me to celebrate and affirm the monumental breakthrough I have made in my process.  I am sharing what is happening with me as a way of owning and honoring the courage I have shown in following my Spiritual Path.  And I share it to demonstrate how that courage has given me the freedom to passionately feel Joy and bliss in many of the moments of today, in spite of, because of, the fact that I am also deeply grieving the pain of "crushed hopes, broken dreams, and devastating heart breaks" from the past - and feeling great fear about a future unknown outcome (a potential reenactment of the most heart rending loss of them all.)

In the course of that sharing, I mention some things that may be outside of your perspective if you haven't read my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls - or if you are new to this site, to my version of recovery.  Such things as:  past lives;  Twin Soul;  ancient wounds;  hundredth monkey principle;  Karmic settlement.  I wanted to make a point here that it is not necessary to your codependency recovery to deal with any of these kinds of issues.  I needed to explore the larger Cosmic Perspective of this experience of being human because it was my Spiritual Path in this lifetime.  I needed to have an understanding of the complexity of this human dance in order to be able to write my book. 

"About 5 years ago, while doing a workshop at a New Thought Church in the San Fernando Valley one of the participants asked me a question.  (This might actually have been the same workshop that provided me with the lesson about flowers that I mention often - it was the same church, where I did several workshops, and I think it was probably the same day.  This also may be a story I have told elsewhere - can't remember right now.)  The question isn't important to this discussion, but the remarks he made to preface the question are relevant. 

He said something to the effect, "Boy you are like an olympic athlete or something in this area. You really know this stuff." 

I first said something like, "I had to get to know it because I was so sick" - then amended it to "I mean wounded." 

And that was part of the Truth - because I was very wounded.  It was not the larger reason however - because you all out there have been very wounded also, and you don't need to know this stuff like I do.  The larger reason I had to understand the wounding and recovery process for codependency was because of my mission in this lifetime.  I had to go to great lengths of understanding very complex and complicated issues in order to be able to explain them in a relatively simple manner. 

My Quest to find a Spiritual belief system that could support the possibility that I was Loved and Lovable, led me to developing a Cosmic perspective of this life business that was / is huge.  At the same time that I was expanding the intellectual paradigm with which I viewed life, I was pursuing my emotional healing. 

It was when my personal emotional healing process came together with the expanding consciousness I was being led to on my mystical Quest, that my book was born.  In order to write my book (by the way, 4,352 copies of the third printing were delivered last Friday afternoon Nov. 7th - hurrah!) I had to come to an understanding that was far beyond what I would have needed for my personal healing process." - My Unfolding Dance 24 Published November 14, 2003

And I also want to make the point that the intensity of the grief I describe here is not a level that everyone in recovery needs to go to.  It will be important at some point in any person's codependency recovery / inner child healing to be willing to do the deep grieving of sobbing and crying.  How often you need to do that, or how soon, is not something you get to know right now.  There is not a right or wrong way to do recovery.  There is no time table that one is supposed to meet.  There is no destination to reach. 

You will be led to do what you need to when you need to.  The more open and willing you are to go where you are led, the easier the process will be for you to access the courage to take the risk of venturing into the unknown - of being willing to endure the discomfort of feeling the feelings.  Relatively easy that is - relatively easier as you make progress - because feeling feelings intensely is always going to be uncomfortable for those of us who grew up, and live, in environments in which "normal" is emotionally repressive and dishonest.

One of the most important parts of this process is to accept and Love ourselves where we are at, at the same time we become willing to give recovery priority in our lives.  It is human to resist and procrastinate.  It is human to want to avoid the discomfort of feeling the feelings.  Judging and shaming our self for our feelings - or for our human resistance - is the disease at work. 

I am going to use one more quote from my journal to make my points here, and then plunge into the emotional stuff. 

" . . . . . . .  it provides a reminder that you all do not have to get into issues to the depth I have had to do.  That includes not only in terms of past lives, but also in terms of breaking the inner child wounding down into so many ages, and going so pain stakingly through so many layers of wounding.  You all have lives to live that don't afford you the luxury of spending almost all of your time and energy focused on recovery.  It is one of those good news bad news good news situations again.  The good news is the Universe has manifested the support I need - primarily through Love Offerings from you all (to keep the book in print) - to make my life all about recovery.  The bad news being that means it has taken me years to painfully work through the levels of my fear of intimacy issues with lots of grieving, deprivation, and solitude - much of the time needing to use a microscope to see into every dark crevice of my inner landscape.  The very good news being that I am doing work that I Love and am being guided down a magnificent, magical path that includes Joy in almost every day, and occasionally allows my spirit to soar on the wings of Love and Joy for prolonged periods of time - the flying times I talk about, which this particular writing frenzy most emphatically has turned out to be. . . . . . 

. . . . What I am attempting to communicate to you here is the dynamics of the process - not the "right" way to do it.  I am trying to help you understand the framework that has been so helpful to me - not specific blueprints of how you need to do it.  And also, I guess, I am getting the opportunity to role model how vital it is to be honest with self - and how flawed and imperfect I have been and am.  A Magnificent Spiritual being having a human experience. :-) 

Another reason is . . . . . . 

"A big part of my mission in this lifetime - in terms of the amends I needed to make to humanity - was to write my book. . . . . . 

. . . . . In order to come to a level of understanding of how this dance of life works, and be able to communicate that understanding in a fairly simple straight forward manner, I had to do a lot of work in terms of getting in touch with past lives. . . . . . . 

The work that I needed to do is not work that other's need to do in order to do their healing.  The Karmic issues we need to settle are reflected in our childhood wounds - and doing the inner child healing will heal the Karma necessary for most people.  I want to make a point of that so that no one out there thinks that past life work is something you have to do.  If you need to do any, you will be led to do it.  I needed to do it in order to write the book." - Dance 6 - July thru October 2000 - posted 2-2001

The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul  My Unfolding Dance 28 Published January 20, 2004

What I have to share with you here is a monumental breakthrough in my quest to learn how to Love myself and be open to Loving and being Loved by another person in an intimate relationship.  It is a Joyous miraculous gift in my life - and a very painful transformation.  I will be eternally grateful for the incredible adventure that the first part of 2004 has been for me. 

Go to additional Newsletter page of March 2004 Update